This guy isn't a spammer in the typical sense. He's a hack 'lawyer' that's been permanently disbarred in Florida for false statements, disparaging remarks, and humiliating litigants.

He's tried to get music banned due to explicit content, violent video games banned because they incite violence, video games declared as pornography, etc., etc., etc. You know they type. More concerned about everyone else's business rather than minding his own.

He's essentially wants to ensure that everyone else lives to his own moral standards regardless of their beliefs or how they want to raise their children.

He's just a big born-again right wing religious wack job for lack of a better term. This latest spam suit is just his latest 'label' among many.

Don't confuse the "right wing" with the religious nutjobs. They are control freaks, whereas most of us in the right wing don't care if you smoke marijuana while watching tv, have orgies in your bedroom, or worship pagan gods.

Holy crap where have you guys beenand why did you let them take over your party so completely. I actually like a lot of the ideals in the republican party but I haven't seen any of them in years. It's become a total lip service to their ideals while they are jerking everyone off with the other hand.

Hopefully they'll get back to making sense and leave this other nonsense behind them.

I think the problem is that not only is this guy Jack Thompson, but he is also a spammer. That is akin to a division by zero or adding multiple infinities - the human mind simply cannot comprehend that level of low.

Ah, advanced Calculus, where some infinities aren't quite as big as other infinities. That, like much of semiconductor physics, I take on faith and trust that smarter people have done their work correctly.

For those who don't get it: the set of integers isn't larger than the set of natural numbers. You can define a mapping function which creates a 1:1 mapping between the set of all natural numbers and the set of all integers. (f(x) = x/2 for all even (x), f(x) = -((x-1)/2) for all odd x). Since there's a 1:1 relationship between the elements of the two sets which covers all the elements of both sets, the sets are the same size.

By way of contrast, the set of all real numbers is larger than the set of natural numbers. You can't map the set of natural numbers onto the set of real numbers because the set has both infinitely large range and infinitely small granularity. Both sets are infinite, but one's bigger than the other.

It's all because of George Cantor. He had the crazy notion that one could compare the size of infinite sets using a generalization of one way you might compare two regular finite sets: Try to find a one-to-one mapping between them. If you succeed, they are of the same size, but if one exhausts before the other, that one's smaller.

So |{1, 2, 3}| = |{a, b, c}| because there exists a one-to-one mapping between them, for instance, {(1, a),(2, b),(3, c)}; but |{1, 2}| |{a, b, c}| because there is no such mapping. We know which one is the smaller one because {1, 2} can be mapped to a subset of {a, b, c}.

In the same way, there are one-to-one mappings between the set of natural numbers {1, 2,...} and the set of integers {0, 1, 2,...} U {-1, -2,...}. Here's one example: {(1, 0), (2, 1), (3, -1), (4, 2), (5, -2), (6, 3), (7, -3),...}, counting up the natural numbers and alternating back and forth between positives and negatives on the integers. The mapping is correct because 1) No number from either set is listed twice in the mapping; and 2) every number from both sets will appear somewhere in that mapping.

We say the set of natural numbers is "countable". Any set that has the same size, or cardinality, as the set of natural numbers is also countable. Any set smaller than the natural numbers is considered countable too, but those sets are finite as the natural numbers are the smallest infinite set.

A good many sets are countable. The natural numbers, the integers, rational numbers, any k-tuple of integers for a fixed k, the set of all finite strings from a finite alphabet...

The first interesting uncountable set you would come across are the real numbers, which are pretty much every number you could form using as many decimal digits as you like, even an infinite number of non-repeating digits (like pi), with the technical detail that any infinite repeating sequence of 9s is actually redundant (9.999... = 10).

Cantor showed that the reals are uncountable with a proof technique he created known as diagonalization. This idea was later adopted by Godel for his Incompleteness Theorem, and shortly after by Turing to show that the Halting Problem is undecidable. This post is long enough so I won't go into it unless you ask, but the idea is simple enough: suppose the reals were countable, then they could be listed in an enumeration. But there's a way to construct a number that could not possibly appear in the enumeration, so we have a proof by contradiction.

Did he manage to spam them with anything interesting? I figure that, if this guy can somehow think that putting porn in a court filing is a good idea, anything is possible when he gets on the internet.

These tactics remind me of a trick on how to check out other girls with your significant other present: feigned outrage.

"Wow look at her shes wearing almost nothing at all. Will you look at that top? You can almost see right down her shirt. And look at those pants! They are so tight they show everything. Disgusting isn't it?"

The simple fact is, if you don't like something, the natural human tendency is to stop looking at it.

Meanwhile this guy has played enough GTA to find the lap dance clip and went browsing through the adult section of a gay website to find a picture to include in his legal filings?

These tactics remind me of a trick on how to check out other girls with your significant other present: feigned outrage.

"Wow look at her shes wearing almost nothing at all. Will you look at that top? You can almost see right down her shirt. And look at those pants! They are so tight they show everything. Disgusting isn't it?"

And that actually worked for you? No offense, but you need to find smarter women to date.

You can't overdo it, and you have to tailor your approach to the woman your dealing with. My previous girlfriend responded quite well to me making snide comments about other women, but she would have seen right through feigned outrage.

My current girlfriend is bi. That's a much better solution to the problem.

This is just more proof that Jack Thompson, much like Steve Balmer, was put on this earth to be an infinite source of entertainment. As long as people like Jack try to attack violent video games and remove them from the shelves, they will never succeed. His tactics of idiocy and harassment don't seem to work.

I wonder if anybody has ever pointed him to/. and everybody who hates him...

I wonder if anybody has ever pointed him to/. and everybody who hates him...

I wonder. I recently passed some corner preachers who took a passage from the Bible and twisted it all out of context. I stopped and engaged them in a conversation, proving they were wrong in the context they had chosen. They got all flustered and declared me a (direct quote, mind you) "Spawn of Satan, send to this world to corrupt these people of God" and continued to shout out about what they had been preaching about.
Its people like this who believe that what they do and say is right and everyone who believes in different things that are a real problem to society.

I got called "the scum of the earth! Lower than scum! It is people like you that are ruining this world for good GOD fearing people." This was while volunteering at a church and fasting for charity. Apparently someone found out I was 'an atheist infiltrator'. This was at the easy going Protestant church, I worry what might have happened had I volunteered at the hardcore Catholic church across the street.

I'm sure he spends all his time worying about what slashdot thinks about him (um, not). Gimme a break.

You'd be surprised. Often people who are such narcissists do care what the public thinks of them. He may have all of the bible thumpers rallying behind him, but the second that someone does say something poor about him or he doesn't get his way he does seem to react with malice [wikipedia.org].

He also sent a letter to Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick's attorney, addressed to Zelnick's mother, in which Thompson accused her son of "doing everything he possibly can to sell as many copies of GTA: IV to teen boys in the United States, a country in which your son claims you raised him to be a 'a Boy Scout'.... More like the Hitler Youth, I would say."

He also sent a letter to Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick's attorney, addressed to Zelnick's mother, in which Thompson accused her son of "doing everything he possibly can to sell as many copies of GTA: IV to teen boys in the United States, a country in which your son claims you raised him to be a 'a Boy Scout'.... More like the Hitler Youth, I would say."

Wait... he triggered Godwin's Law? No wonder he's having all these problems!

What a bizarre comparision. As much as you may hate him because of your personal issues, Steve Ballmer is one of the richest guys on the planet, therefore by most definitions is pretty successful. Jack Thompson is just a criminal who's not quite been caught yet.

I read it more as most spam comes from random relays over in China which we can't really do anything about, but here is an instance where it's trivially easy to point out exactly who is sending the spam. It gets even easier from a prosecution standpoint because Jack is too simple (read boneheaded) to even consider trying to deny sending the e-mails, rather he's going to try to argue that the e-mails constitute protected speech under the first amendment (oh the irony), and just to dig himself a bit deeper start throwing allegations of corruption, bribery, and conspiracy at anyone who disagrees with him (as if the only way someone might not have exactly the same views as him is if they've been bought by some megacorp).

IIRC CAN-SPAM (might as well just add some words to the name and call it the CAN-HAS-SPAM act, but whatever) makes specific exemptions for political advertisements and solicitations by nonprofits, but says nothing about whether the content is commercial or not.

Further, there is no reason why I or my ISP or any other email provider should have to bear the cost of accepting spam. That is pure crap, and arguably theft of services, though obviously IANAL — it might not hold up in court, but I think I can construct a fairly logical argument along those lines.

Spam is commercial email. This is email about a pending legislative action, and thus Jack Thompson has the right to send it because he has a right to free speech.

Just to clarify...

Spam is not always commercial email. However, I believe the CAN-SPAM act is only concerned with unsolicited commercial email. So in that sense, you're probably right that the CAN-SPAM act doesn't apply to this case.

As for filters - that's what spammers say. I don't buy the argument. At some point, the harasser will attempt to bypass filters and you end up inducing a cost to keep ahead of the filtering arms race.

Michael Waddoups should be put in jail. You do have a point here, but I'll go one better. He previously supported Jack's bill, but now because Jack is exercising his right of free speech, however annoyingly, Michael is not going to support the bill. This is not commercial, and it is only unsolicited in the sense that they did not expect it. But of all people lawmakers should be accepting input on pending legislation. Claiming this is SPAM is clearly abuse of the laws they made, and they should know better. Utah State Senate President should absolutely know better.

He is deciding his vote on the personal actions of one of the parties - not whether the bill is good for the people. Better still, he is deciding on his opinion of the actions of one of the parties. He is guilty of not doing his job, which is to represent the people. I read his comments as "You have to go through me, I get to choose the laws."

I don't know which bill this is, and can only assume it's as idiotic as Jack Thompson has proven himself to be. But Michael should not be playing this game in public. I will shut down your bill if I don't like you, regardless of whether it is good for the people.

This is just funny. I think "If you think that ANYONE has the right to harrass and intimidate people, for any reason, you are a complete fuckwad" is a wonderfully self-referential phrase that should not soon be forgotten.

"But all that means is that the CAN-SPAM act isn't the appropriate law to attack him with: instead, the Senator should just go for plain-old harassment" did you not understand, dumbass?

I think the part he was actually responding to was "Spam is commercial email. This is email about a pending legislative action, and thus Jack Thompson has the right to send it because he has a right to free speech."
Spam isn't necessarily commercial, and no he doesn't. The fact that the CAN-SPAM act in particular may not apply doesn't change the widely accepted definition of spam.

Not long after being disbarred, Ol' Jack spammed the entire membership of the Florida Bar (all Florida lawyers) asking for personal stories about how other members have been "unfairly" targeted by the Florida Bar. I presume he wanted to start some sort of class action suit, but I haven't heard anything further about it.

Ol' Jack spammed the entire membership of the Florida Bar (all Florida lawyers) asking for personal stories about how other members have been "unfairly" targeted by the Florida Bar.

Similarly to what I noted above [slashdot.org], that is likewise not spam -- at least in the legal "CAN-SPAM Act" sense -- because the emails weren't sent for a commercial purpose. Instead, it would be a different sort of offense (e.g. regular harassment via email).

The only way it would have been spam is if he'd asked for the purpose of collect

Didn't Jack make some sort of statement prior to being disbarred that he was going to file a class action lawsuit against the Florida bar? Lawyers may be sharks, but they look after their own, one lawyer tries to go after another one (let alone an entire body like the Florida bar) and he'll find himself rather quickly taking a long walk off a short pier, as Jack found out.

If I understand this correctly, Thompson was petitioning elected representatives for a particular change in law. No matter how annoying his tactics or the fact that he was asked to stop, I have to believe that any prosecution of him for these actions would be thrown out on first amendment grounds. Recall that the first amendment reads as follows (emphasis mine):

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You're not the only one [slashdot.org] who realized that. I suppose you got modded up instead of me because I titled my post "Jack Thompson is right." Oh well.

Anyway, I think all that means is that the Senator would be incorrect to prosecute him under the CAN-SPAM Act. I bet Jack Thompson could still be prosecuted under some other anti-harassment law. Even if it is about legislation, if it's more harassing than it is political then it stops being protected speech.

I'm no big fan of Jack Thompson, but in addition to what you said about any CAN-SPAM bits, this (if true) caught my eye..

Senate President Michael Waddoups' statements: 'I asked you before to remove me from your mailing list. I supported your bill but because of the harassment will not again. If I am not removed,

"Stop sending me spam or I will not support your bill" sounds dangerously close to "send me $ or I will not support your bill". I realize that word on the street is that all politicians are corrupt anyway, but a public admission to in my opinion a less-than-honorable ethic? Yikes.

If Thompson's bill was worth supporting before, then his bill should still be worth supporting after annoying e-mails, spam or for all I care: murder. If it was only worth supporting because he liked the guy, then it was never worth supporting to begin with. Either way, Senator President Michael Waddoups needs to take a real close look at what he said.

We're not writing off ReiserFS just because Hans Reiser was convicted of murder - this should be no different.( ReiserFS is being written off for technical reasons in many situations, but that's a different story on a different website. )

If Thompson's bill was worth supporting before, then his bill should still be worth supporting after annoying e-mails, spam or for all I care: murder.

Clearly you don't understand how the Senate works. Bills need support to pass, regarldess of their content. People make deals to support each other's bills. Having friends in your court is crucial if you want to get anything passed. Is this right? Maybe not, but that's how it is, and it's not exactly a secret.
For more information, I suggest reading Fight Club Politics, available at your local library.

"Stop sending me spam or I will not support your bill" sounds dangerously close to "send me $ or I will not support your bill". I realize that word on the street is that all politicians are corrupt anyway, but a public admission to in my opinion a less-than-honorable ethic? Yikes.

I think this is one of those cases where you're mistaking incompetence for malice. To me it looks like he supported the bill because he was thinking of the children, but now he realizes that Thompson is a big fucking idiot and his bill is probably just as stupid. In that case, the only flaw is supporting the bill at all.

If Thompson's bill was worth supporting before, then his bill should still be worth supporting after annoying e-mails, spam or for all I care: murder. If it was only worth supporting because he liked the guy, then it was never worth supporting to begin with.

In an ideal world of complete knowledge and perfect logic, sure.

In reality, if the Senator's support for the bill was based in part on Jack Thompson's explanation of what the bill would accomplish and why it was important, and the weight he gave to Jack

True his actions are considered free speech; however, Jack Thompson doesn't really practice restraint when communicating. An endless amount of communication, especially when his recipient asked him to stop, could be considered harassment or stalking.

You have a very interesting point. However, he's petitioning the Utah state government, which he is not a constituent of. Does the 1st apply to just your local/state/national government, or to every local/state government?

As with anything in terms of the Constitution and your rights, it isn't a black and white, set in stone thing. You have the right to petition the government, of that there is no question. However that doesn't mean you have the right to be a pain in the ass. You cannot, for example, follow your representative around all day long and scream at them. You aren't allowed to harass them any more than you are allowed to harass me.

So this is the kind of thing where you enter a gray area. Clearly you are allowed to

This is the lawsuit
That came from the e-mail
That cause the mess that Jack made.

This is the senator
Who filed the lawsuit
That came from the e-mail
That caused the mess that Jack made.

This is the Act for reducing spam
That was used by the senator
Who filed the lawsuit
That came from the e-mail
That caused the mess that Jack made.

This is the tin of processed ham
That named the Act for reducing spam
That was used by the senator
Who filed the lawsuit
That came from the e-mail
That caused the mess that Jack made.

And after the fine imposed by the court
The only meal that Jack can afford
Comes from the tin of processed ham
That named the Act for reducing spam
That was used by the senator
Who filed the lawsuit
That came from the e-mail
That caused the mess that Jack made.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Simply put, if you are a legislator, you have no right to ask people to not petition you. Jack Thompson was exercising his contitutionally protected right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. There is nothing CAN-SPAM can do about that. Such an application would be clearly unconstitutional.

Now, that said. . . there's such a thing as an email filter that automatically deletes email from certain senders. . .

You bring up an interesting (if partially unrelated) point. By the First Amendment, can an elected official filter email from his/her constituent(s) in their district/state/etc.? I realize Thompson is not a Utah resident, but if he was, would his elected officials have the right to filter out their email, since it automatically would delete anything from Thompson (or other people) that the elected official wants to ignore? Would this constituent the government unlawfully silencing the redress of grievances?

I dunno. I thought about that, but the thing is, the First Ammendment only states that Congress cannot enact any laws restricting those rights, or punishing people for exercising those rights. An individual Senator deleting your emails is not congress passing a law. You have a right to petition the government, but people in Government, I think, have a certain right to ignore you if they choose.

I mean, is there anything that stops a senator from throwing your mail in the trashcan when he sees it's from you?

Can you imagine if a Congressman was legally required to read every piece of correspondence and listen to every speaker? You could paralyze a government by hiring enough speakers / writers to take up every available moment of the Congressman's time (and then still file a lawsuit because your hired army never got their time due to waiting in line behind all the other hired armies).

Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom... to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

I assume this is the part you're referring to, but I don't agree with your interpretation. I don't think petitioning "the government" in this case means that harrassing one government official in particular is necessarily Constitutionally protected behavior.

Well, there might exist a valid harassment claim, but I don't think you could use CAN-SPAM for this. Ultimately, it's up to the courts to decide, but I just can't see it being valid that an Anti-Spam law could be used to punish people for sending emails to legislators seeking those legislators' support in regards to a matter of governance.

As for harassment, I'd personally have to be seeing multiple emails per day before I'd be inclined to find someone guilty of harassment in a situation like this. Jack send

Please, please, please, please, please ignore the rantings of those less enlightened than you. You need to keep up the crusade! Don't stop your actions just because of some idle threats! Keep sending them email until they relent! You know so much more than they do! You're the one that's right!

for those of you that don't understand the above post, please consult your dictionary under the heading "Sarcasm"

I remember a time when Jack Thompson angered me for his ignorance, but now, its better than daytime soap opera drama! He's like the Al Sharpton of video game violence or something, and at this point no one is taking him seriously anyway. I love a good Jack Thompson headline these days, makes me feel better about myself.

Well, if you want to play the Jurisdiction game, one could ask what Jurisdiction the Utah AG has over a case involving interstate communications? Anything related to interstate comm automatically becomes Federal jurisdiction, I thought? IANAL.

Email has become a victim of its (or is it it's) own success. Now we are moving to invite only systems like IM. What we really need is a replacement electronic messaging platform with some form of "postage". I for one suggest teaming up with Stanford and get folding@home a form of postage. Sender must complete 1 work unit for every message sent to a non-registered recipient (a.k.a 1 WU = 1 unsolicited message.)

In addition the government should provide each citizen an official goverment mailbox for non-critical information [INFO] level messages that are from goverment to citizens. Attached to that mailbox is your current legal residence location for automatic filtering and routing Senator and House member email, never forgetting who your represenatives are!

Think about it. He's arguably done more to marginalize the anti-videogame movement than anyone else in history. His over-the-top, histrionic antics absolutely destroy any credibility his arguments might have.

I never understood why gamers cheered for his downfall. Imagine if there was someone competent in his place?::shudder::

As much as I dislike Thompson, it's already well accepted that we have the same right to e-mail legislature as we do to write them letters. I remember there was a lawsuit over a similar issue (in California I think) where someone in government was getting a ton of emails about a pending bill, and they set up a filter to delete them as they came in.

I believe he was sending automated mailing-list type emails although he was asked to stop. This would be different than constructing multiple emails for a single recipient; furthermore, you are more likely to run into allegations of harassment rather than prosecution by AG using CAN-SPAM. Just like with excessive calling, if such actions become harassing, a restraining order can be awarded.

Of course! All of those completely unwanted emails can just be replied to with something along the lines of "remove" in the subject line.

It completely works, and won't fulfill the sole purpose of confirming that your email address is valid and active.

I've been doing this with every spam message I receive. On a completely unrelated note, I think spam is getting worse nowadays. But no worries, I set up an auto-reply to send a kind response to each one of them, requesting my removal. But I'd swear, I think